Still Life with Ham, Eggs and Vessels

Almost all the clay in Meléndez's kitchen pictures came from one place, Alcorcón, a pottery town just outside Madrid where in the 18th century most of the population lived by the trade. Its coarse lead-glazed pots went into rich and poor kitchens alike, because that was what everyone cooked in, and the ceramics historian Natacha Seseña identified the vessels in these still lifes as Alcorcón ware. One of them stands behind the ham here, next to the eggs, ordinary larder food given the same close attention as the pottery. The Prado will not put a year on the canvas. Its record says third quarter of the 18th century and stops there. Two marks sit on the front at the lower left, 587 in orange and a 7 in white, collection numbers from the years the picture moved between the royal palaces in Madrid, at El Escorial and at Aranjuez.